There exists a problem with the battery life of relatively small unmanned air or aerial vehicles, for example those used in surveillance applications such as by the military, police, and fire-fighting services. Quadrotors (four-rotor helicopters) have become popular for such applications. These small unmanned air vehicles are rotorcraft that use four rotors mounted from a central body that carries surveillance equipment such as cameras (visible and/or infrared) and often computer memory to store still images or video collected.
The battery operating time is a limiting factor for small unmanned air vehicles where a full charge of the battery may provide only 15 to 20 minutes flight time. This places undesirable restrictions on the types of missions the unmanned air vehicles may perform, and imposes a critical limitation for many surveillance applications.
In the past, the problem of short battery life has been tackled from a battery design perspective, with improved battery design aimed at increasing battery life and/or reducing charging times. Other work has been performed on improving energy consumption of the unmanned air vehicles.
Therefore, it may be desirable to have a system and method that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.